An Interview with Rivr

How do you come up with the artwork/ videos for the single? ( They’re really cool – 10/10 dig)

Thank you so much, I’m pretty proud of the way they turned out so it means a lot to me. To be honest, I spent quite a long time trying to figure out how I wanted the artwork for my first single to look like. My thought process was like “Welp Isaiah, this is your first song ever, this sets the tone and this is how people will see RIVR. DON’T FUCK IT UP”. So you can imagine I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to create something dope, true to me and true to the way I view RIVR. I had about three other ideas, one including collaborating with my dear friend who is an amazing artist @benevilent who actually created dope illustrations revolving around Circles, but with me being an overthinker and a perfectionist (in some aspects of my life) I just wasn’t completely sold and satisfied with the ideas. It wasn’t until the night before I had to turn in my song that I scraped all the ideas, smoked a lot of weed, and created the artwork you see now. I wish I had a cool thing to say about symbolism in the artwork, but honestly I just thought glitter tears and glossy lips looked cool LOL. The promotional videos was the same story, got high and made it all in one night. I love graphic design, which is what I’m studying in school right now, so I had a lot of fun making these!

How long did the song take to make?

A looooooooong time. If I put a timeline of when I wrote it on the piano to having it ready to be released, about a year and a half. The song was originally supposed to be an acoustic sound, but the direction changed when I met Justin Watson (my amazing producer). Justin is the cousin of Hannah, one of my close friends, who is insanely talented. There was this one time where Hannah and I were hanging with Justin, and I played him Circles on the piano. Justin then played me a beat he was working on at the time, little did I know that the beat would later on become the backbone of what everyone knows Circles as. We made a plan to record the original version of Circles, then work on the beat Justin was working on, so we recorded a rough demo of Circles. T his is where the magic happens, when I got home that day Justin sent me a recording of my acoustic version of Circles mixed in with the beat he was making. IT SOUNDED AMAZING AND FIT SO PERFECTLY TOGETHER, I WAS SHOOK. The next time I met up with Justin, I had listened to the demo about a hundred times and ultimately wanted to get rid of the piano and create more of a dreamy and electronic iteration of Circles. The rest is history.

What inspired the lyrics? (Lmao who hurt you the lyrics “why dont you feel the same way too” hit us real hard)

Ooo, that’s a loaded question haha. I think the lyrics speak for itself, the song is about unrequited love. I was in this thing with this guy, and at the time it felt like we needed each other. We were on two totally different pages, I wanted to be more than a friend to him and at times he would make me feel like I was. I was never sure if he ever really felt the same way, it was a lot of toxicity because nothing was ever clear about us. The only thing that was clear was that I kept allowing this all to happen, I would force him out of my life and allow him to come back in countless times. It truly felt like I was always coming back to square one in the same position as before, running in circles (haha). Ultimately, I burned that bridge to allow myself breathe and grow from the experience. I’m glad I went through that, as much as it hurt because it taught me what self worth is and it inspired a really dope song that I hope resonates with those who need to hear it.